


Deliverance

by Pavuvu



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Blood, Coming of Age, Dark, Family, Gen, Gore, Language, New York City, Prostitution, Violence, mob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 11:58:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3977218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pavuvu/pseuds/Pavuvu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day before the Landlord came a body was found in the alley behind our building. The corpse was Glimmer, christian name Eva Lange, one of the prostitutes who worked the floor above us. I would like to say this was an uncommon occurrence but I couldn’t. Prostitutes showed up dead all the time. Dead when they failed to make rent, dead when they got too old, got too sick, got too anything but too many Johns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deliverance

**Author's Note:**

> Written fora creative writing class taken sophomore year. story 3.

The day before the Landlord came a body was found in the alley behind our building. The corpse was Glimmer, christian name Eva Lange, one of the prostitutes who worked the floor above us. I would like to say this was an uncommon occurrence but I couldn’t. Prostitutes showed up dead all the time. Dead when they failed to make rent, dead when they got too old, got too sick, got too anything but too many Johns.

Staring at the police that surrounded the body from the kitchen window; I knew it would be no different for The Duchess. I knew the day the landlord came we would end up in the same place as Glimmer, strung out on the streets, blood leaking from our brains, finally well and truly fucked.

The Duchess had been in high demand once. It wasn’t surprising really, with how beautiful she was, how classy she was compared to the other women. The Duchess sold herself as a high class whore on a cheap ass market. It worked well for a time, landing her a reputation as a fine lady and that reputation made her the apple of The Boss’s Sons eye. He dated her in addition to her johns, showering her with gifts of jewelry and clothes. Things were good between them until his dick in her cunt made babies she couldn’t afford. If the father was anyone but The Boss’s Son, we would have been aborted. If that was the case, The Duchess would have been better off.

The Boss’s Son never owned up to his part in creating Lolly and I, even though he had more than enough time to do it. I don’t know if it was his utter disregard for us or his abandonment that made me resent him. But I did and I couldn’t help but be happy that when I was 9, he and The Duchess finally ended it for good. Lolly was born shortly after their split and for a few years, things were ok, The Duchess managing to pull in enough money to feed and house the lot of us. But then when I just turned 16, she got sick.

 It was a slow progression, the sickness, and she worked through it for a time, but soon enough her illness made her so undesirable even the most desperate of Johns wouldn’t buy her. The last John she entertained came by six months ago and he was the last of our income. I had scrounged odd jobs the last five months to pay for rent, and food, but it didn’t really help. Last week, we went broke.

I walked my sister Lolly to school the morning after they found the prostitute just like I would have no matter the previous day’s situation. I dropped her off at the little brick elementary school that stood across from the one of the city High Schools, a building I hadn’t gone into since midway through sophomore year. After she was safely inside, I made my way back to the apartment. I don’t want to admit that I took the long way back. Trying anything to make it feel like I had some control of the situation, some control over the time rent came due.

It was 11:50 when Mr. Hu came knocking and closer to noon when I manned up enough to open the door.

“Mik,” Hu said, voice gravelly from a hundred thousand Chinese cigarettes, “Rents due.”

“I, I know,” I looked down at the door knob then back at the man who owned the building. He wasn’t much to look at, 65, tiny, nearly bald. Hardly what was expected of a pimp.

“It’s just, The Duchess, she’s been sick, you know? Can’t take johns like that. We don’t… We don’t have the money. Give us another week maybe. I can bounce another week for you; take another forty dollars off rent. That’d be…” I stopped, he wasn’t amused.

“That’d be only a third of what’s due boy, your smart enough to count.”

“I know, I’m sorry, it’s just that, with Lolly…”

The Landlord frowned, “I give you one week. You pay me full.”

The or else was unspoken but perfectly understood.  “Yes sir, thank you, I understand, I’ll get you the money.”

“You’ll be getting something.” He turned around and walked away, down the cracked hallway with the gauzy red drapes, and stale cigarette smell.

I exhaled shakily as I shut the door, hating the sweat that gathered under my arms and dripped down the back of my shirt.

I took a second to gather myself, and then went to the room I shared with my baby sister. I stepped over her pony toys and the piles of her bright socks to reach the closet, which was stuffed more with cheap clunky toys than clothes.

I pulled out the nicest shirt I had, an Old Navy button down that I bought from a thrift store half a year ago. I pulled it on over my t shirt and left. By passing the Duchess’s closed door like the quarantine sign it was. 

I walked down the hall, passing prostitutes that presented their bodies from their doorways, even though it was early in the day and most their action happened after three. A few of them called to me, playful in the way of older sisters, them being girls from the surrounding streets that babysat me and Lolly before they changed their occupation to sex. They treated me with an easy manner most of their johns would never see, for women who had seen your cock as a baby could never look at you as a man again.

I left the building, and made my way down the grungy streets, weaving around potholes, parked cars, and beggars with the ease of old habit.  I took back alleys until I was nearer to the edge of the city cesspool I called my home. The building I was looking for was at the edge of the area, close enough to the business district to not be entirely out of place. I walked inside; eyes flying over the interior that hadn’t been updated since the 80’s and came to a rest over the woman who sat at the front desk. She looked up from her magazine and said,

 “What you here for boy?”

“I’m here…. I’m here to see the Boss’s Son.” I let out a shaking breath, “Tell him Mik Matthews is here to see him. That it’s important.”

She gave me the eye for a moment before reaching out for the phone on her desk. She held the receiver to her ear and hit a button.

“Hey, kid named Mik Matthews is here to see you… Uhuh, uhuh, ok.” She slid the phone back into its dock and looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Guess it’s your lucky day boy. He’ll send someone for you.”

“Yes ma’am thank you.”  I stood where I was, shifting from foot to foot until elevator doors near her desk opened with a chime.

The man that stepped out of the carriage was more akin to a bear than a human. He was in the upper range of 6 foot, heavily muscled, with dark short cropped hair. He wore a Yankees t-shirt, and I could see the budge of a pistols handle against his stomach.

He eyed me for a moment before swiping his hands down my arms, sides, and legs. When he was satisfied I wasn’t carrying either a gun or a wire he turned about and led me towards the elevator. We stepped inside, and stood awkwardly in the absence of elevator music. After what seemed a decade the doors opened and deposited us into a grungy hallway. Old event posters hung on the wall, half destroyed by bullet holes and dart marks. A few had the speckled rust color of burst blood. From the rumors I knew they all dated the times The Boss removed his competition from the playing field.

The man pulled open a door and motioned me inside. The room was plain, holding a desk, some windows, and my father.

He sat in a black office chair, tilted back, feet on the desk before him. Once upon a time he was a fit man, but the years had stolen that away from him, bestowing him a paunchy middle, and sagging jawline. He was in his 40s, brown hair thinning, crow’s feet beginning to deepen around his eyes. He wore a grey suit, and red and white Nikes.

“Never expected to see you again.” He said, eyes flicking over me dismissively.

“Yah, I um,” I paused in front of his desk, knowing better than to sit unprompted. “I was hoping I could get some work. Cause um, The Duchess got sick, and we can’t…”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Yah, I’ve heard, can’t pay your rent; you’re going to get kicked out of the house. Your mother send you here?”

“What? No. I was just hoping you could help us out. I mean, it’s not like you don’t needs things done.”

“And you think you’re the one who can do these things for me?”

“I’m as good as anyone else.” I said.

He looked a second away from laughing. “You hear that Taggart?” He said addressing the man who brought me in. “Kid thinks he’s better than you.”

The man grunted. “Words are just words.”  

My face heated up and my fingers bit into the skin of my palm. “You need things done. I can do it.”

The Boss’s Son, shook his head and brought his feet down off his desk. “I don’t like you boy. Never have, but I did have a hand in creating your miserable little life, no denying that. So fine, you get one shot. You go with Tag, and you do everything he says. If you fuck it up, you won’t get a second chance; you won’t even make it out of this building. That will be the end of you, your sister, and your whore of a mother. You get it.”

I gave a stiff nod. “And if I do it right?”

“If, and I mean if, you don’t fuck things up. I’ll pay your rent this month. If by some act of God you’re actually worth keeping then we’ll talk again.”

The Boss’s Son brushed a hand down the front of his jacket then waved that same hand at me. “Get out.”

I turned, walked past Tag, and through the door. The big man followed me out and gave me a hard stare. He was angry, at me or at The Son, I wasn’t sure.

“You meet me back here at 5:30. You any later than that and I leave you. No rent money, no second chance, you got it.”

“Yes, I got it.”

Taggart turned around and walked back through The Boss’s Sons door. I could hear their argument as I walked down the hall.

It was 1:45 when I left the building. I paced through the streets of New York, trying to calm the shaking in my hands and cool the heat that burned my throat and face. I wandered back to my sisters schools and sat outside in the pollution. I watched motor traffic and pedestrians pass in an endless chase. Kids with late lunch had and finished recess and still I waited, until finally, after the buses lined up like convicts, the school bell rang. The children burst forth like an overflow levee, all small and thin, short in the way adults forget kids can be, tiny in a way that makes you disbelieve you were ever that small.

Lolly appeared in the doorway and skipped down the steps, her blond hair bouncing in her disintegrating braids. She wore torn jeans and an old t-shirt of mine that fit her more like a dress than a shirt.

I stood when she neared, smiling despite how my day was going, and opened my arms just as she leapt for me. I swung her around and around, her legs kicking, laughter reaching a shrieking pitch.

I asked her how school was when I set her down. Helping steady her until her brain righted itself and she could remember her own feet.

“It was good,” she said as she adjusted her My Little Pony backpack, “Jenny and I swung on the swings, and I drew a rainbow fish in art, and we had fries for lunch.”

I took her hand as we crossed the street. “That sounds like fun. Did you get new spelling words?”

She pouted. Spelling was her least favorite assignment. “Five; Because, Castle, Monkey… and I don’t remember the rest.”

It takes ten minutes to walk from the school to the apartment, fifteen if you have short legs. Like always our street was full of hookers, who we greeted as we past. Most of the girls were happy enough to see us, teasing Lolly and I, but a few had the stressed, hungry look Glimmer wore before she ended up on the concrete, a look I’m sure I shared.

We walked up the stairs to our apartment, which was just as silent as I left it all those hours ago. Lolly dropped her backpack by the door and broke away for the fridge, pouring herself the last of the juice and eating the last of the crackers.

I left Lolly to her business turning towards The Duchess’s room. I knocked before I entered; closing the door behind me quickly so Lolly couldn’t see inside.

The Duchess’s room was small, over taken by a king size bed; with crumpled sheets that once made the whole room smell of debauchery, but now had the overwhelming stench of sweat and vomit.

“Hey Duchess,” I neared the foot of her bed, watching as the wraith like figure moved in response to her name.

“Yeah Baby?” Her face turned toward me, the sickly color of Spanish moss, her eyes sunk deep were dull.

“I have to go out tonight. You have to watch Lolly, I’ll feed her and get her to do her homework, and you just need to make sure she gets to bed on time. Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah okay honey.” She sunk further into her pillows and smiled up at me like she use to at her johns. An expression that had probably been seductive, but now seemed pitiful. “Will you make crab for dinner tonight? I do love crab?”

I reached for the door knob and lied to the off white wood. “Of course.”

I made ramen that night. The noodles went to Lolly, the broth to the Duchess.

I met Taggart outside the Boss’s building at 5:20. He waved me into the passenger seat of a big back SUV, the type you see Russian Mafia driving around in the movies. The seats were leather. The back of the vehicle was swathed in plastic sheeting.

“So, what are we doing?” My question was hesitant.

“I’ll tell you when you need to know.” Tag turned up the YES Network after he responded, shutting down further conversation with a crank of the knob.

We drove for fifteen minutes, taking a litany of side streets, and alleyways one would not expect such a big car to fit through. Until finally we came to a stop, the car squashed between two brick buildings.

“Ok boy, look at this and memorize it.” He passed me a picture of a man, “He’s going to be coming out of the Kranst building in ten minutes. I need you to get him here. I don’t care how you do it; just make it happen without him getting suspicious.”

“O-okay.” I looked at the picture again, setting the face to memory. “What’s gonna happen to him?”

Taggart gave me a look, arms crossed over his chest.

“R-right, sorry stupid question.”

I got out of the car, and walked toward the street. Finding myself two blocks down from where the Kranst building stood. The Kranst was a small brick office tower that played home to the lawyers that people in the shady aspect of things like to use. Not because they were particularly good but because they came cheap.

I hid around the corner of a building on the opposite side of the street, palms sweating, heart pounding, mind a miasma of ‘what ifs’.

I waited, eyes glued to the Kranst’s doors, until finally he stepped out. Hair just as greasy and flat as the candid photo, sporting the same 70’s fringed jacket.

I took a deep breath. Heart punching my ribs, I burst forth, shoulder checking the guy as I snuck my hand into his pocket and pulled his wallet.

I ran off; slow enough to be followed, making sure I could hear the guy’s angry yells and heavy steps after me. I led him back toward Tag. Into the alleyway, and deeper toward where the car was parked. I slid past the car and Tag emerged from the shadows behind the guy, effectively trapping him.

Taggart was even more of a monster in the fading light, massively built, seeming impenetrable. He held a pistol in one hand, a baseball bat in the other.

“Hey Burgin.” He said, before the bat crashed into the guy’s skill, sending him forward, a second hit caused blood to pool from the back of his head and his body to crumple to the ground.

“What the fuck!” I gasped, nausea and disbelief filling me even as I struggled to support myself against the SUV’s door as my lungs and legs burned from the quick dash. “You didn’t say you were gonna kill the guy!”

The Thug shrugged, fitting his gun into the front of his pants, and tossing the bat into the back of the car. His expression scolded me, _what did you think was going to happen?_

“Help me get him into the car.” He said before he bent down to take the guy’s feet in hand. I moved to grab his arms, gingerly wrapping my fingers in the leather fringe as I lifted, slung, and swung him into the plastic wrapped trunk. I helped The Thug pull the sheets around the corpse, and then layered blankets and cardboard boxes over him.

I got into the passenger seat when The Thug told me, and stared forward, seeing nothing of the city as we drove and drove. We drove out of the city into the suburbs and from the suburbs to the mountains where horse farms were abundant, and the stars above us could be seen.

I had never seen stars before, having never left the city where the light at night was too vibrant for star light to penetrate. We drove until the Yankees game was over, and then we drove some more until we pulled to a stop outside a barn large enough to house a Boeing jet. Taggart shut off the car and went to the trunk.

“Mik. Go pull those doors open and flick on the lights, then come back.”

I did as he said then returned and helped him with the body. We took it into the barn and this time I could smell the odor of animals. It was a deep angry scent, smelling more like shit and body odor than animal hide.

“It’s a pig farm.” The Thug said, as he lifted the body onto the table and pulled away the plastic sheeting. “You need to get rid of a body; you take it to a pig farm. Pigs‘ll eat anything. They eat the bones, the meat, and the hair, all of the evidence.”

He grabbed the corpses jaw and pried it open with some difficulty, rigor mortis having set in. “They eat all but the teeth. Those bastards are the only problem.”

My stomach rolled and my throat jerked like I was gonna puke.

“Mik.”  Taggart pointed to the far wall, where tools hung. The metal rusted with grit and rust. “Get the pliers and the hatchet.”

I walked to the wall and pulled the tools down, gagging as I came in contact with the grit. I dropped them on the table and slunk away, hiding by the barn doors, trying not to watch as Tag pulled out the guy’s teeth. I managed ignorance for a time, but when he took the hatchet I had no choice but to look. The sound of dismemberment too horrible not to have an image to go with it, and once I looked I couldn’t turn away. 

When he was done he bundled the bits back into the plastic and pulled the open the doors that led further into the barn. “There’s a hose in the corner, and Lime on the shelf. Shake it over everything then spray it down the drain. Do _not_ get it on you.” He left me for the braying squeals of the pigs.

With shaking hands I pulled the Lime from the shelf. Shaking the white powder over pools of blood, watching as it plumed into the air, and stung at my eyes and lungs as I breathed it in. When things were coated, I went for the hose, thankful for the high pressure nozzle attached; I stood as far away from the gore as possible and sprayed away. I tried to convince myself it was just food dye I was spraying down the drain, not the lifeblood of some human whose crime I didn’t know, nor probably ever would.

 

Taggart returned before I finished, and eyed my progression with stale eyes. When the water hit concrete and no longer turned pink, I put the hose away, and followed the man out to the car. I slunk into the passenger seat, and he to the drivers. He turned on the car and the radio and drove us back to the city. No matter how long we sat in the car, the smell of death never lessened.

He pulled to a stop in the alley behind the Boss’s building. He didn’t turn off the car; just he leaned over and dug around the glove box, elbowing me in the side as he did. Too freaked out to move, I waited until he found his prize. A white envelope, sealed, and new, “Your payment”, he dropped it in my lap.

I slid out of the car, careful to keep the length of the car between him and me. “Listen Mik.” The Thug said. “If you talk, even think to whisper what happened tonight. You’ll be dead before you blink and your body will end up at that pig farm and that will be the end of you. Got it?”

“Yeah.” I wheezed, hand clenching around the thick envelope. “I got, I got you.”

Tag nodded and motioned for me to close the door, which I did, and he drove off.

I stood in the dark alley for a minute, envelope half crushed in my hand, breath coming shaky and harsh.

I made my way back to the apartment. I past the waiting whores, and those preoccupied with work. I unlocked the apartment door and stepped inside the unlit room. The door shut solidly behind me before I let myself fall against it, sliding to the floor, breath coming in rough hacks. I held the price of a man’s life in my hands, a measly $2500.           

 

I paid The Landlord rent the next day, before walking Lolly to school. She asked me where I was last night, why The Duchess had watched TV with her instead of me. I didn’t say anything, even as her questioning got more and more frequent.

When I walked home after dropping her off, I went to my room, lay in my bed, and didn’t move.

 The rest of the month held no change.

Until one day, there was a knock on the door. I pulled myself from my bed and hobbled over to where the visitor hammered on the thin wood. I pulled the door open, The Thug.

“Taggart.” I greeted.

“Mik.” He returned. “New month, more rent, same deal. Two days, 4:30.” He held out an envelope.

With shaking hands I took it, not managing to look into his eyes. “Okay.”

He nodded, left, and I closed the door.

The envelope was light in my hands. Thin as if it were empty, except for that it was sealed.

I stared at it and it back at me. My hands trembled; my fingers grew cold, my throat tight. I worried a fingernail into the flap and ripped it half open before the tears came. Deep choking sobs, I dropped the envelope to the floor and left it.

Lolly walked home from school by herself that day. She was angry at me for not coming to get her, hurt by my betrayal she locked herself in our room, and only opened it when I tempted her with dinner. She relocked it when she finished eating.

I sat outside our door that night, unnerved and embarrassed by my own incompetence. The half opened envelope taunting me. I couldn’t protect my family; I couldn’t get a real job. I was the son of a whore, a bastard, a nobody. I had killed a man once, and I couldn’t do it again.

I could hear the Duchess’s breath rattling in her lungs even through the wall. I forced myself to my feet, and I opened her door. She lay on her bed in the dark. Her eyes were wet, she looked at me.

“Hey baby.”

“Duchess, we need to leave.”

“Leave baby? Why would we do that?”

“I can’t pay rent, Duchess, I can’t get the money again, and it’s all gone.”

“It’ll be ok.” She told me, “Nothing can happen to us. Everything will be fine.”

I stood by the door. “No. No, it won’t be.”

“Of course it will honey.” She said even as she lay still on her bed.

I squeezed my eyes shut, and backed against the door. My hand finding the knob, as the scent of death assaulted me. “It won’t be ok. You’re dead. You’re dead.”

The Duchess lay still, wrapped in her sheets, which once smelled of sex but now smelled of sickness, the skin of her corpse the color of lime scale.

I fled from her room.

 

Lolly opened the door to our bedroom the next morning, already dressed and packed for school. I waited for her, at the kitchen table. Cereal bowl set out for her. She hugged me before she sat to eat. A silent apology.

I rolled a glass between my hands. “Lolly, you’re not gonna go to school today. We’re gonna go on a trip, go somewhere new, somewhere better. Does that sound good to you?”

She looked at me, a mix of pleasure at skipping school, and half concerned at the sudden change. “Where?”

“Somewhere west of here. I’m tired of the city. Do you want to see the stars?”

“What about mom?”

I swallowed thickly, “The Duchess is sick Lolly, and she can’t come with us. You know that.”

_The Duchess has been dead for days_.

 “You always call her that. Why do you call her that? That’s what her boyfriend’s call her.”

I turned away and ran a hand across my face. “The Duchess…Mom, Mom’s says you need to pack. That it will be better for us out west. Please Lolly, listen to Mom.”

Her expression says she doesn’t believe me but she trusts me enough to nod.  “Okay.” She walks back to our room and I follow. Pulling the duffle bag out from under my bed I let her shove her clothes and a few of her toys into it, before I take the rest of the space for me. I scour the room for any money that may have found its way under the bed, or between the toys. Anything to help supplement the 400 dollars I have left from The Boss’s Sons payment.

 

When everything of value has been cleaned from our room, I take Lolly’s hand and walk her out of our apartment and out of our building for the very last time. We pass the prostitutes who have long been our neighbors; we pass The Landlord as he goes collecting. We pass the street that would take us to The Boss’s Sons office, and to the Kranst. Until we finally come to a stop outside the AMTRAK station. I let Lolly look at the board, telling her to choose where she wants to go. Her finger lands on Harrisberg, wherever that may be.

I buy the tickets, and pray to god that this train will lead us somewhere safe, to somewhere better. Somewhere I won’t have to become a thug like Dad, and Lolly won’t have to become a whore like Mom, a place where she won’t get sick from her work, and I won’t go crazy from mine.  It may be too late for me but I can still hope for her.

 

                                                  


End file.
